


long as the room keeps singing, that’s just the business i’m in

by mondaycore



Series: the last of the real ones [4]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Action, Alternate universe - Mafia, Angst, Feelings, First Time, M/M, first kill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 18:08:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20934500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mondaycore/pseuds/mondaycore
Summary: Feels familiar, the kind of night he’s having. Feels like he’s been having a lot of them lately. He’s usually not accompanied by a gawky nineteen-year-old wannabe gangster, though — that part is brand new.





	long as the room keeps singing, that’s just the business i’m in

**Author's Note:**

> whassup, it’s everyone’s least favorite day of the week, back at it again with the fic equivalent of a dumpster cat leaving dead mice at the fandom’s collective doorstep.
> 
> as per usual, contains: gun violence, sexual content, the fuck word, and a title by fall out boy. daniel/max is only very briefly mentioned in flashback, in case that matters to anyone.

Feels familiar, the kind of night he’s having. Feels like he’s been having a lot of them lately. A night that starts out so full of promise and excitement — as promising and exciting as a routine shipment inspection can be, anyway — and then in the blink of an eye, due to circumstances entirely out of his control, it all goes Charlie-Foxtrot, degenerates into chaos, angry shouts and the stomp of boots reverberating through the warehouse, the air splitting with the whip-crack of pistol fire, bullets pinging off the metal catwalks crisscrossing the space overhead and the shipping containers stacked about, maze-like.

He’s usually not accompanied by a gawky nineteen-year-old wannabe gangster, though — that part is brand new.

“OH GOD WHAT’S HAPPENING,” Lando yells, before Daniel pulls him quickly behind the cover of a shipping crate and firmly clamps a hand over his mouth.

“Keep it down,” Daniel says. “You’re already dressed like a goddamn highlighter, no need to also announce verbally you’re an easy target.”

“M’m srrry,” he says, muffled against the palm of Daniel’s hand. They’re pressed together, back to chest, and Daniel can feel Lando’s heart rabbiting away, two hundred beats a minute, the kid wide-eyed and trembling and drawing ragged shallow breaths, looking like he’s about to piss his pants.

Daniel, he’s cool. He’s chill. This isn’t his first rodeo. He’s been in it for a long time now, _ God _it’s been years, hasn’t it, he's racked up some very high number of rodeos — but he remembers the feeling of his first, wink wink, quite well. The gut-wrenching panic when the shooting started, the dazing hit of fight-or-flight adrenaline right to the brainstem, the sudden moment of realization that this mafia shit isn’t just flashy cars and nice suits, it’s real. Real bloody. Real deadly.

Well, he _ had _been tasked with showing Lando the ropes. In retrospect, it was probably was Carlos’ indirect plea to take Lando off his hands for the night, but Daniel might as well make good on the request, see if he can’t teach the kid a thing or two.

“Alright,” Daniel says, with a professorial clap of his hands. “Welcome to Life Lessons With Daniel Ricciardo. On tonight’s episode: getting yourself out of a sticky situation.”

“Title of your sex tape,” Lando mutters reflexively.

“Nice,” Daniel says, breaking lecturer persona to deliver a well-deserved high five. “Step one: positive attitude. You’re doing great already.”

“Thanks, I’ll make sure to keep that in mind when I’m _ bleeding out and dying._”

“Hey, we’re not done here yet,” Daniel admonishes. “Step two: know your enemy. Who, tonight, is … ” He pokes his head out from the side of the crate and withdraws quickly as someone fires a potshot right past his nose. “_Ferrari? _ Why the fuck are Ferrari after us?”

“What? I don’t know!”

“They have no beef with Renault,” Daniel says, then narrows his eyes suspiciously. “What did you do, Lando?”

“What? Why are you assuming _ I _ did something?” Lando squeaks, rather unbecomingly. “Maybe it’s Carlos they want.”

“Please,” Daniel says. “Nobody wants Carlos. I mean, everyone does, but not like that. It would be a crime to kill someone with hair that beautiful.”

“I will literally give you cash money if you stop talking.”

“Okay, seriously. If Ferrari were after Carlos for whatever reason, they would have made a move by now. Especially after what he did during your little business trip to Russia. Incredible. Everyone knows that between the two of you, he’s the real threat.”

“I’m a threat,” Lando protests, straightening up to his full unimpressive height. God, he’s adorable. It’s like watching a cotton ball of a kitten puff up to look big and mean.

“Sure you are, kiddo,” Daniel says, ruffling his hair. 

“What if they’re after the shipment?”

“Why would they have any interest in our product? It’s ass. Have you tried it? Jesus, it’s a bad trip,” Daniel says, shuddering at the memory. “No, they’re here for _you_. Which brings us back to the question: what’d you do? Steal Charles’ girl? Short-sheet his bed?”

“First of all, she’s his _ ex _— ” Lando says, with a look on his face that Daniel’s seen on many a defense lawyer, preparing to plead a case before the jury. 

“Actually, don’t answer that,” Daniel says, deciding that all the drama between the baby mobsters running around is too much for his old-man brain to keep up with. Also, he doesn’t care. “Answer this instead: how many of them are there?”

“I don’t know, ten?”

“The difference between doubt and certainty is the difference between life and death,” Daniel says sagely. Damn, that was deep. He should write these down. “Here’s how you find out. You see that crate right there, the green one, seven o’clock?”

“Yeah?” Lando says, craning his head to look. 

“Good,” Daniel says. “_ Onetwothree go_.”

He grabs Lando by the shoulders and lunges across the open floor of the warehouse toward said container, bodily maneuvering him, half-shielding, half-dragging him as a squadron of red-clad assholes pop up like a gallery of carnival targets and start firing. A hail of bullets streaks by. Lando flails, stumbling and ungainly — their legs nearly tangling, tripping them both — and Daniel pulls him down hard and they hit the decks, tuck and roll, diving behind cover again.

“Twelve,” Daniel says, exhaling sharply, grinning with satisfaction. “Three to the left, three ahead of us, five between us and the door on the right, and one above.” Too easy. Someone needs to teach these Ferrari goons basic tactics, like not being baited into exposing their position given the slightest twitch of movement, and maybe tack on a remedial course in how to aim too. Amateurs.

“What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck _ we almost died. _”

“You’re wearing Kevlar, you’ll be fine,” Daniel says, giving him an encouraging _ thwack _ to the chest. Lando doubles over, wheezing. “Oh. You’re not wearing Kevlar. Come on, man, always wear protection. That’s not something _ I _should have to teach you.”

Lando mumbles something under his breath and Daniel nearly fumbles and drops his gun as he draws it out of the holster.

“Excuse me?” Daniel asks. Lando, mortified, buries his head in his hands and crouches all the way down and curls into himself, flushing red to the roots of his hair. “Lando, did you just say _ I can’t believe I’m going to die a virgin? _”

“Actually, I would like to be shot now,” Lando says, straightening up and stepping out from behind the container, inviting another swarm of bullets his way. Daniel pulls him back in by the scruff of his neck, smiling widely.

“We’ll get you out of here, and then we’ll get you _ so _ laid. Pinky promise,” he says. He holds his hand out insistently, pushing it into Lando’s face, until Lando groans in defeat and hooks his little finger around Daniel’s, because the gesture _ matters _, man. “Okay, step … what step are we on, three? Step three: make a plan. Luckily, while you were bemoaning your sad lack of sexual prowess, I did already. Here it is: I’ll flank around, draw their fire, and clear out some of the men on the ground. You circle back, find a way up to the catwalk, deal with the bastard up there, cover me from high ground. We clear a path to the door, we peace out, we’re drowning in strippers by half-past midnight. Sound good?”

Lando nods. He draws a sleek, compact pistol out of the waistband of his pants, handling it with a cautious deference, like he respects what it’s capable of but is still afraid of it a little. Daniel doesn’t miss the way Lando sneaks him a sly glance as he does so, craving his approval as he always does whenever he does something he deems _gangster_. He can almost imagine Lando, the grade-A dork he is, standing in front of the mirror at home, practicing his draw, playing at looking tough, being hard — _you talkin’ to me, huh? you talkin’ to me?_

“You ever kill anyone?” Daniel asks, screwing a suppressor onto his pistol. “Like, outside of your video games.”

“Yeah,” Lando says, too quickly. Daniel pauses in his task to raise an eyebrow.

“What do they say about bullshiting a bullshitter?” he says, amused. “It can’t be done.”

“Fine. No,” Lando mutters. 

“Just take your time with it, line it up right, breathe through it. Two to the body, one to the head.”

He taps Lando twice on the sternum and once on the forehead to illustrate. He tips Lando’s head up with his finger, and thinks suddenly, Jesus Christ, he wasn’t expecting to have to teach the kid _ this _ tonight, to guide Lando across that unforgivable line. He wishes he had a fun quip for the occasion, some dumb joke he could make to soften the severing blow — but there are no words on earth that could make the act kinder, less rending.

His inner turmoil must show on his face, because Lando crosses his arms defensively.

“It’s fine, I can handle it,” he insists. “Besides, you’ll be there to watch my back.” 

It hits Daniel like a sucker punch, the naked trust shining in Lando’s eyes beneath the hysterical edge of terror. It makes something shiver through him, a fierce determined protectiveness tempered with something softer and wrenching, almost painful to dwell upon.

So he stops dwelling upon it, denial being just a river in Egypt and all. Besides, they’re far from being out of the woods yet.

“Okay then. You ready?”

“I’m ready.”

“Good,” Daniel says. He closes his eyes, forces himself to focus, really focus, mind like a lens, eye of the tiger, baby. “Let's get out of this goddamn hellhole.”

As soon as he darts out from behind the container, the warehouse explodes into noise and light and his body transmutes to match, becomes a thing of chaotic instinct more than a creature of reason — juke left, dart right, stutter-step, duck and weave, return fire — _ there, _ a window of opportunity, a man unaware — square up, aim without aiming, trust your body, trust your process, strafe across — two shots, two kills, twin splatters of red. _ Click click click _. Shit. Reload, reload. Duck behind cover, eject magazine, slam a new one in, rack slide, good as new, good to go.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Back into the fray.

Zig-zagging as bullets pelt by, missing their mark, ricocheting, concrete chips flying up and metal sparks raining down on him — catapulting himself up and off crates and containers and sideways through the air _— John Woo, motherfucker, death from above_ — making the moves nobody expects him to make, coming out of nowhere and taking and taking and taking because it’s his, it’s all his, keep moving, live forever.

This is what he loves, with a fervency that almost shames him. This is why every time he thinks of putting it all down and walking away from the table, thinking he’s too old for it, too jaded, let the young ones take over —_ this _is why he gets drawn back in. Because there’s nothing else that comes close to the thrill singing through his blood right now, the exhilaration of the hunt, the seeking, his entire being tuned to one purpose, to search and destroy. 

But then the world stops dead. He hears the sharp, ringing _ crack _ of gunfire and a high-pitched yelp, and he whips his head up just in time to see Lando stumble and fall to his knees, his weapon skittering away on the metal grating.

All that fire in his veins suddenly hardens into ice, colder than cold, numbing him entirely. His vision tunnels in on the two bright spots of red and orange above him, the Ferrari gunman advancing on Lando, raising his gun as Lando scrabbles frantically on his hands and knees to retrieve his own weapon.

“_No! _” Daniel yells. He raises his weapon, sights, pulls the trigger — but the firing pin hammers down on an empty chamber, and he’s out of ammunition entirely. He moves without thought, sprinting toward Lando. The Ferrari gunman looks over his shoulder like he'd sensed the attempt and smiles, knowing Daniel won’t make it in time, he’s helpless, too far away to do anything.

The red-clad gunman turns back toward Lando, cocks, aims, pulls the trigger.

_ Click _. 

Misfire. 

Daniel’s heart lurches, a slipped gear, uncontrolled freefall. He thanks all the powers he doesn’t believe in that Ferrari can’t build reliable things for _ shit._ But the man works fast, clears up his jammed weapon right as Lando grabs his pistol, rolls onto his back, points it upward — and then freezes, eyes wide, hands shaking. Caught in the throes of trigger panic.

The Ferrari gunman smirks again and angles his gun down, a mercy-kill shot, like putting down a wounded animal. 

“Do it, Lando!” Daniel screams. “FUCKING DO IT!”

There’s a second where everything freezes. Then, a single, sharp report of a pistol firing. A spectacular spray of blood.

The Ferrari gunman jerks backward and crumples. Lando also flops down, breathing hard, his weapon slipping from his fingers as he clutches at his leg. Daniel scrambles up to the catwalk and tumbles down beside Lando, heedless of the metal grating cutting up his hands and knees. 

“You’re okay, Lando, you’re okay, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Daniel says, pressing deft hands to Lando’s face, his chest, his belly, checking for injuries. Lando’s hands and clothes are stained with red, but it looks worse than it is. The bullet had only grazed his leg, and the rest of the blood isn’t his.

“Told you I could do it,” Lando says obstinately, and turns to one side, and vomits.

\--

“Carlos says we have to lie low and stay in the safe house overnight. Charles’ men are mobbing the streets looking for us,” Daniel informs Lando, hanging up the burner phone and flinging it out the window in a fit of annoyance. He feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin, edgy as hell, jonesing for _something_ to do to burn off the residual adrenaline from the night.

“I was promised strippers,” Lando says. Not that he looks in any shape to do anything. He’s curled up in a tight, miserable ball on the couch, roughly patched up but still wearing his grimy, bloodstained clothes. 

“I will forward your complaint to Charles,” Daniel says. He skirts around the couch and takes a seat, but only because there’s nowhere else to sit except the suspiciously stained mattress on the ground that's supposed to pass for a bed. The other reason he doesn’t want to stay here any longer than he has to is because he can’t take the idea of being cooped up in this shitty little apartment with Lando right now. Not when it replays in his mind again every time he looks at the kid. The red-clad gunman raising his weapon, Lando lying prone and defenseless. The _click _of the trigger that, in his memory, sounded louder than an explosion.

The second Daniel sits down, Lando shifts over, resting his head on Daniel’s thigh. There’s a painful twist to his mouth that suggests he’s holding back tears and Daniel, helpless to resist, runs a hand through Lando’s hair, over his arm and down his side, soothing. 

After a few silent minutes, Lando suddenly asks, “what if there was a war between McLaren and Renault?”

“What?” Daniel asks, thrown. “Why would that happen?”

“Dunno, just like, _ if _it happened.”

Daniel shrugs and falls silent. His instincts tell him there has to be something to the question. It’s too targeted to be just a hypothetical, and besides, Lando’s a shit liar, a mess of nervous tells and giveaways made loose-tongued by pain and the comedown from an incredible adrenaline rush. He wonders if this has something to do with why Ferrari, of all houses, had ambushed them tonight, and makes a mental note to send some men over to McLaren to do some recon, ask some questions, break some legs. Come to think of it, there _ had _ been rumors of Mercedes that he’d dismissed as — 

“I mean, would you kill me?” Lando asks. “Like, if it’d been you and me up there, facing off. Would you do it?”

That grinds the gears of his train of thought to a screeching halt. So that's what Lando's after. Shit. Daniel would much rather prefer it be a declaration of treason than this. But his brain has latched on to the question already, and he thinks about it again, that stomach-turning scene, but this time in this sick spiralling fantasy he’s the one standing above Lando, the slight helpless form on the ground, aiming to kill, and Lando is still looking at him like _ that _, with utter trust in his eyes, all but baring his throat to try and please him, craving his approval.

“Don’t make me answer that,” Daniel finally says, and what he really means by that is, there’s no answer he can give that would make him feel good about himself. 

“So you would,” Lando says, sounding disappointed at himself more than anything else for asking a question and getting an answer he didn’t like.

“Business is business,” Daniel says, which is as much of an evasion as he can manage. He’s been in this game long enough to know that there’s no room for anything personal within the bounds of the professional. It’s a disaster waiting to happen — he’d already made the mistake once, with — with — with Max, Jesus fuck, he can barely even bring himself to think it — even more doesn’t want to admit how compromised he is already with regards to Lando. The easy banter they have, the smug little thrill he gets whenever Lando looks at him like _did I do good, Daniel?_, the way Lando can always startle him into laughing when he least expects it. 

A long, long time ago, when they’d been partnered up, Sebastian had told him he wasn’t cut out for this world. Why, he’d asked, offended, and Sebastian had said, _ you have too much heart for this, Daniel. _ He hadn’t understood it at the time, but he does now, could maybe understand why Sebastian himself had walked away from it all …

“I really thought — I thought it’d be easier,” Lando’s saying, jolting him back to the topic at hand. 

“It’s going to get easier,” Daniel says, and God forbid he’s still around to see that day, he doesn’t think he’d be able to take it, Lando with the hardened look of a killer, handling a gun, easy as breathing. 

“I don’t know if I could,” Lando says. “If I were you and you were me.”

“That’s the wrong fucking answer,” Daniel says. He grabs Lando by the shoulder, sits him up and shakes him urgently. “Listen to me. The answer is _ yes _. All the time. Always. You — you can’t — ” 

He flounders, tries to marshal the unruly bag of cats in his brain to come up with something coherent for once. He’s not good at this, using his words, he’s never been so _ eloquent _ like other people are, has always believed in _ less talk more walk _ , intent through action, but it’s imperative that Lando gets what he’s trying to say. Because should there come an opportunity to _ show _Lando what he means, it’ll be far too late.

“Doesn’t matter who’s asking you, doesn’t matter when. Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it, you say _ fuck yes _, and the day you honestly can’t do that, then you burn your papers and get the fuck out. Promise me.” 

Daniel ridiculously holds up his little finger again, and Lando’s eyes widen off whatever he sees written on his face. He reaches out a shaking hand, hooks his pinky around Daniel’s, releases, then leans forward and kisses Daniel hard on the mouth.

_ Oh shit, oh fuck _, Daniel thinks, panicking. There’s no way he should do this, especially not after that little speech he gave, there’s no way this is going to end well.

“Lando, no, you almost just _ died _, you’re not thinking straight — ” he says, pushing away, but Lando is having none of it, climbs full into Daniel’s lap and puts his hands on Daniel’s shoulders and kisses him again, eyes shining, frantic, scrabbling, messy. And this time Daniel gives in — didn't take much did it — puts a hand around the back of Lando’s head and dials it down, turning it all slow and slick and dirty. He’s so fucking going to hell for this, if the murder and the shady mafia shit weren’t already enough to guarantee him a ticket on the downward-bound train.

Lando opens up for him, sweet as anything, then angles his head and drags his tongue up Daniel’s jaw, at the blood he knows is splattered there from the unpardonable things he’d done tonight. That does it, drives Daniel absolutely batshit, and he pulls Lando in closer so Lando’s grinding against the join of his hip and thigh, mewling like a kitten, moving against him like he needs it to save his life. 

And maybe he does. Daniel knows how it feels, to come so close to death that only absolute, ecstatic proof of life can cancel it out, the reassurance that someone out there in the unforgiving world is still willing to _ give _ instead of _ take. _ He’d be a hypocrite to judge, and besides, his judgement is shot where this kid is concerned, he’ll give and give and give and fucking give until he’s got nothing left.

“Please, please,” Lando says, and Daniel gets what he’s pleading for, strips Lando of his clothes, puts him in his lap and fucks him, quick and graceless but hardly heartless, and it doesn’t last very long for either of them, wired as they are.

The silence that follows is fraught, almost deafening. By unspoken agreement, they settle back to exactly how they were before, Daniel wedged into the corner of the backrest and armrest, Lando stretched out horizontally, his head resting on Daniel’s leg. But Daniel’s no calmer than he was five minutes ago, in fact, he might be _more _tense, like if he says one thing wrong, he's going to set off a bomb.

“Least I won’t die a virgin anymore,” Lando says, halfway drifting off to sleep already. Daniel doesn’t say anything. He absolutely shouldn’t encourage the kid any more. He thinks about Max, the way he does when he’s in a really bad place, the fucking implosion that happened there — and realized he’s already several miles down that path, the stable loop of bad decisions, ready to relive it all again.

Too much heart. He doesn’t learn. _ He never learns _.

He swallows hard against a lump in his throat and tips his head up against the back of the couch to stave off the threatening prickle of tears at his eyes. An immense exhaustion suddenly drapes over him, and he closes his eyes and imagines it, one more time. The two of them, standing off, Lando lying on the ground, him looming above — _ would you kill me, if it came down to it? _

He’d say yes, Daniel insists to himself. He _ would, _and he fucking _ could _ . But then, right before the darkness draws in over him, a different thought springs unbidden to his mind, a clear and scathing peal of reason in the moral morass he's wallowing in: _ hey, Honey Badger, maybe you should take your own advice for once. _

**Author's Note:**

> [leaps from dumb banter to combat tactics learned from video games to angst to sex in under 4000 words] parkour
> 
> so this was a bit of an experiment, but jury’s out on how it turned out because i found their voices kinda hard to nail down. here’s hoping someone somewhere got something out of this! the usual: this is a work of fiction and please let’s keep the real world and the real people involved in this, uninvolved in this. and of course and as always, thank you so much for reading :)


End file.
